Danielle Goodman Dooley, MD, MPhil, FAAP '95
Political Science

As a senior in the Department of Political Science at MIT, I was writing my thesis on the public policy and legal implications of a scientific technology that I was studying in a laboratory at Beth Israel-Deaconess hospital; my thesis supervisors were a physician and a lawyer. At almost any other institution, it would have been hard to combine a rigorous policy education with a technical and pre-medical curriculum or to see professors collaborating across disciplines; but not at MIT. As a student in the department, I came away with the sense that anything is possible- any type of career, any type of collaboration, because that was the example that was set for me by the department. I am a full time, bilingual general pediatrician for Unity Health Care, Inc., a non-profit organization in the District of Columbia. I am the Medical Director of Adolescent Health Services and oversee our outreach to teens and our three School-Based Health Centers which are located in large city high schools. My work takes me beyond the clinic walls as well- I testify in court for child abuse and neglect cases and work closely with agencies in the District that serve children and families; I advocate for changes in legislation that will enable us to better serve our patients; I am on the Executive Board of the DC Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics; I have served on the Mayor’s Commission on Food and Nutrition; and I received a Community Champion Award from the Surgeon General for my work on obesity prevention in the school setting.

My career has been shaped around three themes- anything is possible; advocacy for children and families; and awareness of the political environment that I am working in. The department made me the multidisciplinary pediatrician that I am today.